“Newsweek magazine in 1995: “Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic. Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.”

Wow, whoever said that, I am curious if they’re still writing future predictions?

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Lean, Kanban, Agile Pairing, TDD (sometimes test after) software architect and programmer. Worked with distributed (called cloud sometimes) computing services since 2007 using phat data (8 billion rows of data on an AVERAGE day, sometimes called big data) and everything from business intelligence to the nitty gritty of array structures inside file based data stores to create caching tiers for custom software needs.
Currently pushing for distributed technologies & improving software architecture, better data centers, the best software development practices and keeping everything secure in the financial industry again.
To see what I'm up to today, check out my blog at Composite Code.

CD-ROM/Computers/Internet/Etc… cannot replace a competent teacher. In fact one of the biggest debates in education right now is the value of computers. Big promises were made about how computers in the classroom will engage children and accelerate their learning. The problem is decades later there is almost as much evidence against the educational benefits of computer in the classroom as there is for. Newsweek: 2 Cheerleaders: 0

And please tell us how networks have changed the way government works — because beyond a few technical changes — I haven’t seen any. Is ignoring you constituents’ emails some kind of improvement over ignoring their hand written letters? Perhaps networks have support more efficient organization of people — but that is a change in scale, not a change in kind.

Maybe not in the United States, but take the middle east. Social Media has kicked off far more change there than the last two decades of American Military Presence. With just mere communication via Facebook and Twitter, the people have shifted entire Governments, and in a way overthrown them.

The United States might not have made a huge shift yet, but it is actively doing so. The communication from the white house is vastly increased, for those that use the Internet, social media has become a mobilizing force. Sure there are the previous generations that still won’t budge, but overall things are changing and the change is more dramatic than you may realize right now. I would however agree with the sentiment that we the people, in the United States, need to do much more than we already are to change our Government for the better. Even if we can’t agree how, we need to get active and be sure to try.

But then of course, that last bit is just my 2 cents. The change however is happening.